Thanks to Apple’s mobile payments push, Apple Pay, contactless payments are on the rise, according to a new report issued from market researcher Juniper Research.
For background, contactless payments let shoppers wave their mobile phone in front of a reader at the cash register to make a payment. Their credit card is automatically billed without them having to take it out of their wallet. Apple debuted Apple Pay last year to enable iOS devices to make contactless payments.
Apple (APPL) CEO Tim Cook has said that Apple Pay will be accepted by 1.5 million locations in the U.S. by the end of 2015. During Apple’s earnings call in January of this year, Cook revealed that Apple Pay made up two out of three dollars spent on purchases using contactless payments across the major credit card companies, including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
Juniper Research supports Cook’s data, and says that the number of mobile wallets using contactless technology is expected to reach 200 million by the end of 2016, up 100% from the end of 2014.
Whats more, the launch of Apple Pay has helped spur the growth in contactless payments over the past year. Google (GOOG) also debuted its contactless mobile payments technology, Android Pay, earlier this year and is expected to roll the service out broadly in the next few weeks. We’ll also likely see updates to Apple Pay announced at the company’s news event this week on Wednesday, September 9.
The report also highlighted the weakness of rival contactless payments technologies, including Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a mobile payments system that is being developed by a group of merchants, such as CVS, Target, Best Buy, and Walmart.
Called CurrentC, MCX’s technology allows retailers to have access to valuable customer data from transactions. But CurrentC has had stumbles along the way, including succumbing to a security hack, and a delayed rollout, according to Re/Code.
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